Typically an audio player is connected to sound reproduction means, such as loudspeakers, and it is operated in a location or a room that is shared by multiple persons. For instance a living room in a private home is shared by a family with a father, a mother and multiple kids, or an office is shared by multiple colleagues, for example. Previously the reproduction of music by means of audio players was limited to the use of a physical medium with very limited storage capacity, such as a vinyl records music cassettes, or CDs. In this case the number of pieces of music accessible from a single storage medium was limited to a number of approximately 10 pieces of music at a time. Alternatively it was possible to tune a radio receiver to a certain station and to listen to the music momentary offered at this station. When a single person is using the audio player for reproducing music at the location, the person chose a storage medium or radio station having a type of music, which fitted both his/her current taste of music and mood. When multiple persons were present at the location, they had to mutually agree on a certain storage medium of radio station, which had to be manually adjusted.
Moreover, due to a combination of the rapidly growing storage capacity of storage media and the advances in digital compression techniques, such as the popular MP3 file format, a user may choose from a tremendously larger amount of pieces of music at the same time. For instance, MP3 files sampled at 128 Kbit/s, typically minimise the amount of storage space needed approximately with a factor of 10 compared to non-compressed files. A CD, for example, has typically a storage capacity of approximately 700 MByte. As Recordable CDs can be used to store MP3 files, and the fact that an average size of an MP3 file typically is approximately 2-3 MBytes, about 300 pieces of music can be stored on a single CD. As a further example, a DVD has about 6 GB storage capacity, i.e. approximately holds more than 2000 average pieces of music. As another example, a portable audio player, such as the IPod® from Apple Inc., can currently have a maximum storage capacity of about 40 GB. Given the above mentioned average size of an MP3 file of about 2-3 MBytes, about sixteen thousand pieces of music can be stored on these audio players storage medium before the storage medium is full. As the past has shown, the amount of storage space available at the same cost will constantly increase, i.e. in the future even more pieces of music will be available on a single storage medium. At the same time the accessibility to networks, such as the Internet, with adequate bandwidth, enables a user to access an in principle unlimited number of e.g. Internet radio stations or other sources for digitally stored and via networks, like the Internet, distributed pieces of music. Several audio players may also be connected to each other via networks.
Therefore it is increasingly difficult for a single user of modern audio player devices to find and play music, which is appropriate for the user's current taste of music and the current mood of the person. Moreover, if multiple persons are present at the location of the audio player, it is virtually impossible to agree on a certain music source playing an adequate type of music fitting all present persons' music taste and current moods. This is caused by the confusingly large choice given to the users.
A similar situation was encountered when the number of available TV channels increased considerably. One approach was to introduce so-called electronic programme guides (EPGs). For instance, the German patent application DE-A1-198 14 254 discloses a query-based electronic television program guide, wherein an EPG database is interrogated to produce a list of programmes that may be of interest to a certain viewer of television programs. DE-A1-198 14 254 teaches that viewing preferences for certain types of television programmes are used for queries to the database. The viewer preferences are either composed by the users themselves or are automatically developed by inspection of viewing habits or viewer profiles, wherein the viewer profiles may also be produced by interrogation of the viewer. Queries relating to different viewers may be merged and queries may restrict selection of certain categories. Based on this, the viewer narrows dynamically a list of proposed TV programs until only a few choices remain. A 10-key alphanumeric keyboard is used for inputting data in form of letter or number codes both for filling the database and for choosing a program to watch. However, this inputting of data is inconvenient, as the user has to keep track of multiple letter or number combinations, among other things. Furthermore, there is no consideration of the current mood of the users. The mood of a user may influence the acceptance of a user of a certain type of music or specific music titles considerably. For instance, if the user is sad, happy or angry, he/she will prefer a different type of music.
Thus, there is a need for a new audio player enabling multiple present users to easily agree on a certain type or selection of music to be played.
In addition to the type of music, the multiple users may also have differing audio-preferences, such as the adjustment of volume, bass, treble etc. It is a problem that the current adjustment of the audio player does not fit the taste of the multiple users present. For instance, such audio preferences may be classified as rock, pop, classic, etc. There is a risk that users will not like a certain piece of music being played with a contradictory audio-adjustment.
The present invention overcomes the above-identified deficiencies in the art and solves at least the above identified problems by providing a method, an audio player apparatus, a computer-readable medium, an audio signal and use of an audio player, according to the appended patent claims.
The general solution according to the invention is that, if multiple persons are present in the room where the player is situated, then the device should know which persons are present and which audio-preferences, i.e. genre or audio-adjustments, are preferred at that time.
The invention provides a simple yet powerful interface to realise this.
More particularly, this is achieved by means of an audio player device being aware of the preferences of each of the persons that are regularly present. These preferences are specified explicitly or implicitly. The preferences are e.g. interpreted as a list of songs on which at least some of the songs are rated on a range from particularly like to particularly dislike, possibly with additional metadata of each song such as genre/mood or links to webpages where more information is stored.
Taking in a selectable genre/mood into consideration enables the user for instance to reflect, support or suppress the current mood, depending on the current mood of the user, such as being sad, happy or angry. This also gives the users a choice to select a genre/mood setting, differing from the current mood of the user, e.g. for getting happy when being sad etc.
According to aspects of the invention, a method, an audio player apparatus, and a computer-readable medium are disclosed.
According to one aspect of the invention, an audio player apparatus is provided. The apparatus comprises input means for inputting the presence of at least one user at a location of said audio player apparatus, as well as input means for audio-preferences. The input means are operatively connected to the audio player apparatus. Audio reproduced by said audio player apparatus is adapted to the audio taste of users present at the location of the audio player apparatus, as indicated by said input means for presence of users.
According to another aspect of the invention, a method of playing audio based on preferences of at least one user of an audio playing device as described above is provided. The method comprises the following steps. In one step, the presence of a user is indicated by an input means on said audio player. In another step a preferred genre/mood of audio to be reproduced by said audio player is indicated by input means on said audio player. Thus audio reproduced by said audio player apparatus is adapted to the audio taste of users present at the location of the audio player apparatus.
According to yet another aspect of the invention, a computer-readable medium having embodied thereon a computer program for processing by a computer comprising a code segments for playing audio based on preferences of at least one user of an audio playing device is provided. The code segments comprise a first code segment enabling at least one user to indicate its presence by an input means on said audio player. A second code segment enables at least one user to indicate a preferred genre/mood of audio to be reproduced by the audio player by input means on said audio player, such that audio reproduced by said audio player apparatus is adapted to the audio taste of users present at the location of the audio player apparatus.
The present invention has the advantage over the prior art that it provides multiple users, having different audio preferences, with an audio player providing with an easily accessible way of agreeing on a common type of audio to be reproduced. Furthermore it offers a single person using an audio player a convenient way of instructing the audio player to select an audio type preferred by that user without the need of giving the audio player cumbersome instructions.